There are many open-source free tools that are helpful for your startup or small-business website development. But with so many to choose from it can be difficult to know which ones are the best. After testing many open source software solutions, I have compiled the list of top ten open-source software for startups.
WordPress
WordPress is the undisputed king of the open-source CMS market. It began as a blogging platform, but has grown into a robust CMS that powers more than 25% of the sites on the web. With an enormous community of users and developers, WordPress offers countless themes to choose from as well a plugin repository that offers more than 50,000 plugins to enable you to extend WordPress to do just about anything you can dream up.
Drupal
Despite its steep learning curve, Drupal is perhaps the most developer friendly CMS option. It’s built for efficiency and security. While other CMS may have third-party plugins available to provide caching to speed up page load times, Drupal offers support for this out of the box. It offers a host of built-in security features and reporting functionality: one of the reasons many governments use Drupal.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a customizable internet browser and a free open source software. It offers thousands of plugins that are accessible with a single click of your mouse.
The platform holds 3.98% of the worldwide browser market share and it is available for Android, iOS, Windows and Linux.
According to CNET, Mozilla reshaped the technology industry and fanned the flames of open source software that changed the way social networks and operating systems function.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a complete office suite that offers presentations, documents, spreadsheets and databases.
Unlike Microsoft Office, which is not accessible for everyone due to its pricing model, LibreOffice is totally free.
To support it, its users can make donations when they download. So, it has a huge community of contributors.
It is available for Mac, Linux and Windows and it also has a live chat and a forum where you can turn to when searching for help.
GIMP
Another of the best open software source examples that is worth mentioning is the photo editing tool GIMP.
It offers similar features like some of the expensive tools on the market including various filters and effects, and yet it is free.
GIMP is available across different platforms including Windows and Linux and it has different 3d party plugins and customization options.
Plenty of illustrators, graphic designers and photographers use it to improve their pictures and enhance their work.
VLC Media Player
VLC Media Player is one of the most popular open source software examples that you can use for free.
This multimedia player is used for video, media and audio files and it plays discs, webcams, streams and devices. Most of the users use it for streaming podcasts as well.
It allows you to optimize your audio and video files for a particular hardware configuration and also offers a plethora of extensions and skins which allows you to create customized designs.
What’s more, it runs on different platforms such as Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, iOS and more.
Brave
Brave blocks ads and tracking pixels. It speeds up your browsing experience while attempting to overhaul the relationship between publishers, advertisers, and end-users.
Blender
Blender is another of the best open source software examples of 2021.
It is a 3D graphics and animation tool that supports motion tracking, simulation, animation, video editing, rendering, modeling and much more.
It also offers a set of modeling tools and features including real-time viewpoint prereview, multi-resolution and support for Planar tracking and Tripod solvers.
Shotcut
Shotcut is a video editor that offers powerful features including audio and webcam capture, color, text, noise, and counter generators, support of popular image formats, EDL export and much more.
It is a great tool to edit your audio and video files with and it is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
On its website, you can also find great resources and tutorials on how to use this free open source software.
Joomla
Long a favorite CMS for sites with membership needs because of its sophisticated access control features, Joomla also offers front-end editing right out of the box. There is no need to access an admin panel in order to make simple changes.
Charted
Creates charts automatically from a .csv file or from a Google spreadsheet. Charted automatically generates simple line charts and stacked column charts.
MATTR Enterprise – Best for design experiments and proof-of-concept
The MATTR platform champions a verifiable data ecosystem and can be used to extend, augment, and/or drive your application product. The MATTR CoLab Incubator provides a creative, highly collaborative workspace between product managers and partners with which to conduct design experiments and draft proofs-on-concept. This provides in-app support to translate high-level design concepts into testable artefacts.
MATTR Enterprise has a freemium version of the product available. Their sales team offers customized pricing upon request for additional needs.
Open vSwitch – Best for quality of service (QoS) control
Open vSwitch is used in multiple products and boasts the ability to run in many large, complex production environments. Open vSwitch is a production quality, multilayer virtual switch that empowers network automations via programmatic extension.
They support all standard management interfaces and protocols (e.g. NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, RSPAN, CLI, LACP, 802.1ag). Their robust QoD control supports both traffic shaping and OVS support policing.
Open vSwitch is free to use.
X2CRM – Best for marketing teams
X2CRM is an open source product development tool with enterprise-grade CRM, marketing automations, and a customizable sales management suite. Marketing teams will enjoy the workflow automations that touch on customer contact across email, website, phone conversation, events, and chat.
Additionally, the dashboards are clean, flexible, and easily digestible, which will empower marketing presentations to C-Suites.
X2CRM costs from $35/user/month.
OpenPIM – Best for small and medium businesses (SMB)
OpenPIM is a product information management system designed specifically for small to midsize businesses; they are free to use, easy to learn, and make it possible to automate routine processes that SMB owners don’t have time for.
OpenPIM is designed to store and optimize your product data and then distribute it across all channels: online stores, websites, and marketing channels (Amazon, eBay, PriceRunner), as well as printed catalogs, data sheets, and brochures.
OpenPIM is free to use and offers a free demo.
Gimp
With the ability to manage and edit multi-layered image documents, Gimp is the most robust open-source image editor available. For photographers and graphic designers, it’s an absolutely essential tool.
StrikeTru’s smallPIM – Best for scalability
StrikeTru’s smallPIM is a fully hosted, customizable, and agile open source product management software powered by Akeneo PIM Community Edition. Take advantage of free extensions like their product change reports, cloud connector for digital assets, image thumbnail previews, SKU title generator, and workflow solutions.
They have no limit on user and publishing channel counts, which is great for growing product teams that value scalability.
StrikeTru’s smallPIM costs from $800/month on a 3-year contract and comes with a 14-day free trial.
Akeneo PIM – Best enterprise open source product management
Akeneo bills itself as the #1 enterprise open source PIM—and for good reason. Akeneo is used by over 300 big name companies worldwide, like Staples, Fossil, Frankfurt Airport, and Tarkett.
Akeneo’s robust product data intelligence solutions empowers product teams to quickly and efficiently deliver relevant product content to the channels where it’s needed most by customers. They also offer plenty of free learning resources, like their “PXM for Dummies” e-book.
Akeneo PIM has a free community edition available. Enterprise level subscription pricing can be requested using their contact form and will vary depending on the number of channels needed.
Audacity
Commonly used by podcasters, Audacity allows you to record and edit audio from multiple sources and can be used for a wide array of audio-related tasks.
Simple Invoices
On the surface, this does what it says: it sends simple invoices. Digging a bit deeper you’ll also find the ability to send receipts, estimates and quotes as well as the ability to generate detailed reports.
Open Source Billing
If you need a simple solution to bill clients, receive payments via PayPal and credit card, resolve invoice disputes and keep records of all of the above, Open Source Billing may be for you.
Conclusion
And, the best open-source software examples we’ve provided above are just proof of how beneficial this software is.
Startups will most likely benefit from open source softwares to start and then they can scale up as needed.